“As beautiful as the name may have sounded, he was not an easy ‘beast’ to know… He treated his servants poorly, and was basically bored of making money, and slaying those he felt were unworthy…”

The Wizard looked up at Peardo to make sure he was paying attention.

“Alright,” the Tabaxi spoke in response to the Wizards glare.

“But like myself, Ember Blue was a ‘man’ of science… So when he approached me with an idea worth exploring, I indulged him…”.

“Her name was Taxia, she was a beautiful Catfolk (Yet Another Breed Of Cat Person/See Catfolk) servant in the House of Blue.

“Ember Blue had taken a shine to her, though he felt she was below him, and his imagination started to figure a way to have her, where it wouldn’t feel as though he was acting below his stature,”.

And so on a dark night within his lavish bedroom, he had invited Taxia to his chambers, and unbeknownst to me, drugged her wine, so that she would be willing to roll in the sheets with him..” Bor’nae took note of the unpleasant visage of Peardo.

“Understand me Tabaxi, if I had known at the time that she was not a ‘willing’ participant, I would have never gone through with it,” spoke the Wizard.

“Gone through with… What?” replied Peardo.

“The two of them mated–” before Bor’nae could finish…

“…Mated?” interjected Peardo.

“HAD SEX!” yelled the Wizard, slamming his staff against the hard rock floor.

Peardo shrunk back into his chair.

“Anyway, it was to be the first time a Rakshasa and a Catfolk had mated… And immediately, I knew something wasn’t right…”.

“Taxia immediately went to the floor, and started to spit out a dark kind of blood…”

“…I knew if I did’t do something, she would die.”

“And so I stepped out of the shadows–”

“”You were watching?” interjected Peardo.

“SILENCE!” bellowed Bor’nae, as he went to his feet…

…The Wizard then sat again.

“Yes… I was watching… And so I stood above her and casted… Well… Never mind what I casted… And a dark blue light swirled around her…”

All sitting at a long table for breakfast at the Inn, Laenor came down the stairs with the Sage.

After breakfast, the Sage got us all a private room for a meeting to occur.

After much discussion, we decided we would not return to Pentacle, in case they were aware of why the Gnolls were cursed, and were merely using the Gnoll Slaying competition in order to clean up their mess.

it was decided that the Party would separate, Walker our Rogue, and Ulfin our Barbarian Dwarf would head to the Halfling Leader of The Sun Hills, while the Sage would find his son, the Fighter, and communicate our findings to the Gainsboro Sands Capital, and their Leaders.

To my surprise Laenor suggested we head to Mount Marshal, so that I could speak to my King, and then head towards the Till Woods to notify his Elven people.

I brought up the fact that we had promised Nekana that we would help her confront her family, who had banished her years ago, but being that they too were from Mount Marshal, this wouldn’t be a problem.

It was decided that I would approach their King while they went to see her family.

And so we were off!

Finally to make our way out of this Desert, it’s heat, it’s bugs, its’ death and mystery.

But of course, on our second day of travel, we ran into four swarms of Scarabs, and/or Beetles.

Difficult to attack, we did our best

Our Elven Fighter Feldaerae lashed at them with her whip, hitting some, but the bugs struck back damaging her.

I called out the words ‘BY THERAMUS, I SEARING SMITE THEE!’, and my blade caught a blaze…

Several of the bugs were killed, and some were left ablaze, but sadly the fire quickly went out.

Nekana, our massive (tall) female Barbarian, continued onward at first unaware of the attack that was happening behind her…

…but after I damaged the Scarabs, they fled and ran right into her.

She Raged in a Frenzy! Angry, and annoyed, she laid waste to the rest of that group.

Meanwhile Ashkan, our Human Ranger sent his Vulture after the bugs, with minimal results…

…he also swang his short sword about, to no avail.

Unfortunately one of the other unharmed groups of Beetles attacked me, damaging my form, and thus I called upon Theramus once more, my hands glowing blue, and placed them upon my chest, healing me.

Sadly they were relentless, as they covered my body, attacking me until I fell unconscious.

Meanwhile our Elven Eldritch Knight Laenor swang his rapier, and even threw down his fist smashing several of them.

…then, seeing I was down, cast Healing Word upon me, raising me directly to my feet with a gasp!

I can not say how many times this Druid has aided me, I am forever in his debt…

…for though I have great bestowed gifts within me at the hands of my God Theramus, my body is not as strong as I’d like it to be.

Soon we defeated the enemy, Nekana doing more than her fair share of the damage, and we continued towards Mount Marshal.

Once there we came across a bit of a run down Tavern…

…I myself wanted to continue to our destination, but before I could say anything, Nekana had entered, and got the Party a table.

Laenor, stricken by her unusually friendly behavior, watched from the doorway, trying not to be seen.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Party entered, and sat at the table.

The oddest thing then occurred…

…Arinar, not a drinker, asked for water, and the Barkeep wouldn’t give him any…

…after much questioning, and Laenor secretly trying some of the water for himself, we came to find that a WIGHT had moved into the area of their well, and tainted the water.

Laenor threw up most of the water, but I grabbed his arm and took him outside where I Cast ‘NEUTRALIZE POISON’ upon him, my hands glowing blue once more, I placed them against his chest, and he suddenly felt better.

He then looked at me and said, “A Wight… This sounds up your alley…”.

He was, of course, right.

Inclined to ‘extinguish’ this Wight from mortal troubling, the Party decided, we would seek it out, and destroy it!

During the creation of my Homebrew, FROST RHEALM, I found many pieces of Art/Pictures that I felt captured the feeling I’m looking for

I’m currently looking for an Artist to Create some Drawings for my FROST RHEALM Module, but I thought I’d post some that I found along the way which can serve as inspiration for Creating Art for the project.

The First above gives me the feeling of what the Ice Fortress Frost Rhealm might look like.

When we reached the border of the Blightlands where the Barbarians had told us about an exit through the magic barrier, where it for some reason parted, there were dead bodies all about.

Lost souls who had tried to come through the barrier by passing through its’ magic, only to lose there minds, and apparently, meet their makers.

Unbelievably there was a Gnoll underneath one of the bodies that was still alive…

Laenor approached it, and tried to speak to it, but it only mumbled ‘Kill Man… Kill Man” over and over again.

And so Laenor secretly put it out of its’ misery, and told the Party it had died.

After this, we inspected the opening in the barrier, and once I was convinced it was safe, I offered to go through it first.

Once through it the extreme heat of the Gainsboro Sands sent me to one knee.

The Blightlands had been so much cooler, but we really hadn’t seemed to realize the vast difference upon entering it.

Though we were underground a long time before we had.

The rest came through, some felt weakened like me by the heat, some did not.

Nekana our Barbarian laughed at us.

And so we were headed home, but first we needed to travel through the Gainsboro Sand’s intense heat.

Immediately we ran into three large Desert Lizards…

A short battle occurred, Nekana literally cutting one of them in half with a single blow of her great axe…

She laughed again.

The rest of us were able to take down the other two pretty quickly, and so we continued.

We reached the large city where we hoped our Party Member Ulfin would be, as we had Ashkan our Ranger send his pet Vulture with a note to him requesting to meet us here.

Nekana, Feldaerae and Walker went to the tavern, while Laenor and Ashkan headed to the Inn.

Meanwhile Arinar checked out the Herb shop, and I went to the Jeweler.

I had found three blue gems on one of the bodies by the Blightlands border, but couldn’t discern what they were.

The man with the long goggles on his face told me that they were Azurite, and that though they weren’t worth all that much to Gainsman, the Elves found them to be of some value.

I asked if he could put them on silver chains, and he said that he didn’t do such things, so I pocketed them and said good day.

Meanwhile Arinar purchased some Herbs which might aid us against the extreme heat, and Ashkan went to a watchtower where he called his vulture.

He spoke to it, and it told him that it had delivered the note to our Dwarven companion, but for some reason Ulfin headed to the Blightlands instead of staying like we had requested.

And so he sent another note to Ulfin via the vulture, in hopes that he would return in the morrow.

Meanwhile the three girls got drunk at the tavern, and Arinar and I arrived there around the time they felt feeling their drinks.

I offered to buy Arinar some of my homeland’s wine, which they carried, and he said he had never had a drink.

We joined the girls, purchased some wine, and drank.

It seemed to affect Arinar right away, so I escorted him to his room, and hoped to find out some word about Ulfin.

To no avail, and so I went to my chambers, did some meditation and prayer, then went to sleep.

Meanwhile Larnor studied the ‘boom stick’ he found within the Blightlands, joined shortly after by Ashkan who wished to speak to him.

Ashkan was concerned about him, noticing that Laenor had seemed a bit odd since he had went into the trance upon the Blightland Temple’s throne.

Laenor spoke of his past, and how it had something in it that the vision had reminded him of.

The two of them spoke about a good many things, and at the end Ashkan cut his hand, and asked that they be blood brothers…

…a Gainsmen tradition.

Laenor quickly accepted, cut his own hand, and so the two are bonded.

The next morning Laenor spoke to the Sage we had met earlier in our travels, who apparently was logging in the Inn as well, and told him all about what we had discovered in regards to the Gnoll’s Curse.

Sadly, we had agreed the night before that we as a group would discuss these things prior to telling any other…

Laenor had broke a direct agreement with me, and the group, so I needs speak to him.

To a Paladin, one’s word is very important.

Our morning did have some good news, as the gates of the city opened, and in walked our long separated companion Ulfin, laughing in his familiar high pitched way.

After we piled all of the Gnolls bodies together, the Party had a discussion.

We spoke of a Gnoll that spoke Ashkan’s name during the battle…

…he wanted us to spare his life, but that particular Gnoll was set on trying to scratch me.

Our Druid Arinar incinerated it in the end with one of his spells…

Ashkan looked most bleak after the battle…

…we feared that perhaps one of his relative had been somehow transformed into a Gnoll, Laenor and I both came to that deduction.

Ashkan told me that was a dear friend of his that had been taken because of his Firey magic abilities…

…it was mostly likely him that we slayed.

After much discussion, we decided that we should spend another hour or so searching for evidence that might indicate that these ‘Gnoll’s were actually Magic Users who had been transformed into these dog men.

None of us knew exactly how long ‘Gnoll’s had existed in our world, but after analyzing one of their bodies, it did indeed look that he had some human qualities still left in him.

We would travel a bit further, then return to Pentacle with our findings…

This ‘Greater Cause’ appealed to me more than just slaying Gnolls for some contest, even though in doing we were also protecting their potential future victims.

No, there was something more to all of this, and we started to suspect that the Circle of Pentacle may have held back from telling anyone…

…we suspected that they just wanted the whole thing washed away, and thus created this contest so that the Gnolls could simply be removed from the land.

It was nighttime, and several of us needed to rest…

…but before we would, I asked all of the Party to take part in my ‘Oath of Devotion’ Ceremony, where I would join with the God Theramus in his hope of a better world.

We completed the Ceremony, then went to sleep.

The next day we ran across three other Barbarians, but Laenor convinced them that the contest was not a good thing, and so they went on their way without trouble…

…though our Barbarian Nekana was biting at the bit to attack them.

We traveled further in the ruins only to discover more books that seem to indicate some sort of ‘Magic’ People had lived here, and meant to attack the Southlands…

…but to what end?

Nekana encouraged us to forget about the ruins, and instead travel up the path ahead of us that went up a large mountain.

When we reached the top, there was a huge gold temple which was so broken down, that when it’s gold form was touched, it merely turned to dust.

Within it we found a great Throne, and Laenor sat in it.

Within it he had a great vision of the Magic Wielding people following the Leadership of a woman…

…it all felt familiar to him, and once the vision was complete, he felt quite weak.

Thus ended our quest into the Blightlands…

… we would now travel back to Pentacle with our findings, and approach the Circle of power there, demanding answers.